No Country for Old Gnomes Read online

  Hello, she thought aloud to the ovitaurs. Please be calm. I am not here to eat you.

  Instead of being grateful, the ovitaurs baaed and bleated and shrieked in terror. The youngest and most supple one shook her wee fist and demanded that Gerd go away.

  I will go away, Gerd assured them as her talons locked on to the shoulders of the shiny yellö man. I just need to take this fellow with me. There are egges at stake, you see.

  Faucon had promised her four very special omlets—the fluffee ones with gourmet ingredients—if she brought back the yellö man. She had been told he was goldenne, but he wasn’t really shiny, now that she’d seen him in person.

  He was not really a man either, Gerd discovered. For one, he didn’t have skin. He was made of very hard metal, and her talons could only scrape and scratch the surface without getting any real purchase. Faucon had called him a construct, and now she understood. She lowered her rear legs, the strong lion ones, and grasped the hips while her scaled front claws tried to lift at the shoulders. The yellö man strangely made no sound or any move to protest this, but perhaps he saw no need, since Gerd could not move him at all. He was far too heavy, or else there was some kind of magic at work. Meanwhile, as Gerd flapped and strained to lift something immovable, the ovitaurs were throwing rocks at her, and some of these rocks were creating ouchies.

  She screeched at them, and they cringed, and for good measure she thought aloud, Stop that. I will defend myself if necessary.

  They resumed after a few moments, however, and she still could not move the dull-yellö metal man. Faucon would be displeased and she might not get any fluffee omlets.

  But perhaps, if she could not figure out the mystery of this man, one of these ovitaurs could supply answers. She let her target go and flapped her wings to lift straight up, thereby avoiding another volley of rocks, and then swooped down to catch one of the ovitaurs, which was quite agreeably movable.

  “Piini Automaatti,” the ovitaur shouted, “keep my paaarents safe!”

  The creature struggled in the grip of Gerd’s talons, and the other ovitaurs screamed and threw more rocks, but these missed Gerd completely as she banked around to head back to Faucon. The yellö man, left behind, made no objection.

  Hello, I am Gerd, she thought aloud to her selected quarry. I will not hurt you on purpose. I just want you to speak to Faucon. If you stop struggling, you will not be accidentally sliced up by my talons. I am being as gentle as possible.

  The ovitaur stopped her wriggling, though it may have been because they had climbed to such a height that she would plummet to her death if she won free.

  “Faucon will kill me,” the ovitaur said. “You are taking me to my death.”

  Gerd considered this. I suppose that is possible. Faucon has killed people before. But I have not heard him say he wants you dead. He wants the yellö man.

  “You mean the yellow man?”

  That is who I mean, but yellow with a w is insufficient to describe him. He is truly more yellö with an umlaut.

  “What?”

  Gryphones can see more than most creatures. We perceive layers of color and texture that you do not, and our language reflects that. This beautiful sky we fly in right now is not blue with an e; it’s blü with an umlaut. You must respect the umlaut.

  “Umlauts are not high on my list of priorities aaat the moment,” the ovitaur said.

  Nor are manners, apparently. You still have not shared with me your name.

  “I beg your pardon, Gerd. I am Agape Fallopia, Vartija of the Elder Laaaws.”

  Startled, Gerd craned her neck down to look at her captive more closely. Yes, there it was: the telltale lambent glö about her head that certified Agape was a true Vartija. Gerd shuddered with awe.

  When Gerd had been a hatchling and then a fledgling, her mother had told her stories of the Vartija, creatures specially selected to protect artifacts of great and sacred purpose. There was nothing so honorable in the world as a Vartija, and there were few gryphones who didn’t wish to become one at some point. Gerd’s own uncle Lurp had made the entire family proud, protecting a sacred shoehorn once used by that long-dead great ruler and uniter of Pell, King Barthur. But the possibility of becoming a Vartija no longer existed for Gerd: As a disgraced outcast from the Coxcomb, a base eater of egges, she could never be presented to the Solemn and Cloaked Convocation of Elders as a servant of the laws.

  It is my honor to meet you, Agape. What is your charge?

  “I am to protect the automaatti.”

  I do not know what that is.

  “The yellow maaan you tried to steal. He is the automaatti.”

  Gerd’s stomach rumbled with a mixture of hunger and disquiet. Not only was she unable to become a Vartija, but now circumstances had turned her against them. Which meant, she supposed, that she was on the wrong side here. And which meant that Faucon might not be as noble a halfling as she had hoped. He didn’t wear the drub medallion or smell of sour milk like some of the others, and she had told herself that spoke well of his character, but she wondered now if she had not been seduced into something that smacked of evil simply because he made such fantasticke fluffee omlets.

  Gerd hootled in wry amusement. No wonder Faucon had been having such trouble tracking down these ovitaurs: They were honking Vartijas! She didn’t know why the automaatti was important to the Elders, but she knew she wouldn’t help Faucon pursue it anymore, not for all the egges in the Skyr.

  I still think you should talk to Faucon, she told Agape, but you should tell him that you’re a Vartija. I will confirm the truth of it.

  “What difference will thaaat make?”

  I don’t think Faucon knows. I certainly didn’t know. And it makes a difference to me, even if it doesn’t to him or the drubs working for him. I will protect you and return you to the automaatti. I swear it by my nest and keep.

  The creature in her grasp fidgeted as if she didn’t quite believe Gerd, or perhaps she merely found it uncomfortable being carried thousands of feet away from the earth. “Okay, thanks, Gerd. But why aaare you working for him anyway?”

  …I have no nest or keep.

  “Oh. Thaaat makes your oath a bit suspect, doesn’t it?”

  I do not know any other way to swear, but I promise I am sincere. The gryphones no longer consider me one of their own, but I still consider myself a gryphone and abide by all their codes, except for the one about egges. You can rely on me to keep my word.

  “I appreciate thaaat.”

  Gerd spied the camp the halflings had made, saw the smoke rising from the cookfires, and her belly growled again. She was really hungry.

  Spiraling down, she saw some of the drubs point up at her, and one of them went to fetch Faucon out of his tent. He was waiting for her when she landed with Agape, and he looked unhappy, with his hairy arms folded across his smart but slightly undersized pin-striped suit. His scowl deepened when the drubs came to take Agape away and Gerd enfolded her wings around the diminutive ovitaur, screeching defiance.

  Back away. She is under my protection, Gerd thought aloud. The drubs obeyed. They did not want to mess with that beak or those talons.

  “That is not the golden man I asked you to bring me, Gerd,” Faucon said. “That is a scrawny, useless leg of lamb.”

  She is not useless, Gerd said.

  “I’m not scrawny,” Agape muttered. “I have supple flaaanks.”

  “I have no use for supple flanks, so please explain,” Faucon replied.

  I will. But first, that promised breakfast. Four fluffee omlets with gourmet ingredients.

  Faucon shook his head. “That was the promised reward for the golden man.”

  This ovitaur is better, Gerd countered, and we’ll all be in better moods after we eat.

  Silence stretched between them while Faucon reassessed the situation and Gerd
waited patiently. She could see him calculate that everyone was hungry, and if the ovitaur really was useless, all he’d lose were a few egges. Whereas if the gryphone was hungry and denied said egges, she might reconsider her stance on eating halflings, or at least popping their heads off like berries from a bush. Finally he threw his hands up and gave her a grim nod of respect.

  “Perhaps you are right. Skipping breakfast is not the halfling way. The fire is ready, so please excuse me as I make my preparations. If anyone troubles you”—he looked around sternly at the drubs—“you have my permission to eat them. But you do understand that the prisoner must be restrained.”

  Gerd’s eyes narrowed. But not painfully so.

  Faucon’s eyes narrowed more. “For now.”

  When he nodded at Bernaud Cobbleshod and the drubs, they hurried forward and tied the ovitaur to a chair. For her part, Agape struggled and bucked and lashed out with her hooves, but one young ovitaur was no match for a dastardly gang of halfling rogues, who were almost of the same size but had infinitely better balance.

  Once Agape was trussed, Faucon ducked back into his tent, but Gerd remained on high alert. The drubs had regarded her with indifference before, but now that she had stood up to Faucon, they looked less than friendly. And she did not know what preparations Faucon had truly gone to make. Perhaps, since she had defied him in front of his minions, he would seek physical violence. She supposed she did not truly trust him now that she realized he might be more sympathetic to the drubs than to the law. At least he couldn’t stop her from eating the drubs, even if her taste buds urged her not to.

  One drub took a step toward her, his hand stealing toward his pocket, but then Faucon emerged from the tent with what passed for a winsome smile and two jars held above his head, which he shook to catch the sun glinting off the glass.

  “My half of our bargain,” he said. “Crickets and ladybugs! To be sprinkled on four gourmet omelets.”

  Gerd would have smiled if her beak were capable of such elastic exercise. She could hear him add the extra syllable to omlets and suspected he wasn’t saying ladybugges with the proper number of gs, but she didn’t correct him. She and Faucon might have a serious disagreement after this; she would not allow him to hurt the ovitaur, and even seeing the creature tied with strings caused Gerd pain. They might as well have one last fluffee, crunchy meal together before their tender truce was shattered.

  Gerd unfolded her wings and sat back, making a pleased sort of purr. But the ovitaur did not look hungry or pleased. She looked quite glüm. Despondent. As Agape’s browne eyes filled with tears and Faucon twirled his mustache, Gerd knew she had done the right thing, helping this Vartija. If what the ovitaur said and what her aura told Gerd were true, no number of egges was worth giving the goldenne metal man into the hands of the drubs. Gerd would eat, and Faucon would speak with Agape, and then they would see.

  It was fortunate, Gerd thought, that her own senses went beyond, for she suspected that the future had just shifted course. Hopefully for the better. And the batter.

  “It is the rare leader who actively tries to improve the lives of his most vulnerable people. The usual condition of monarchs is to take bribes, reign over a slow tumble into chaos, and deflect blame.”

  —ARNO TUUTTI, in The Unexpected Insouciance of Anarcho-Syndicalism

  ORDER YE NOW AND RECEIVETH HALF OFF. PLEASE TIP THY ’ZA COURIER. COURIERS CARRY LESS THAN SEVEN FICKELS AND THREE TURNIPS. DELIVERED WITHIN THREE HOURS, OR YOUR MONNEY SHALT BE RETURN-ED!

  —PAMPHLET ADVERTISING YE OLDE HUTTE OF PEA-ZA

  Goode Kingge Gustave the Greate—for that was the way his mail was addressed—drooped over a cushy divan, enjoying the many bonuses of being human and able to control his bodily functions. He’d once been a goat, but he got better. A bowl of flawless cherries sweated over ice in a bowl nearby, while a flagon of Kolonic wine sat untouched by his elbow. Try as he might, he couldn’t get a handle on the benefits of a good Kolonic and vastly preferred the effects of a piping hot cup of kuffee. It moved something deep within him, almost reminding him of the giddy, carefree life he’d led when he was just a winsome goat kid, plopping his way through life before a rogue pixie and a magic boot had unceremoniously turned him into an awkward human and sent his pooboy, Worstley, on a quest. For a goat, there were no responsibilities, no worries.

  But as a human, he was, as his friend Argabella would say, Brimful of Concerns. As much as he enjoyed receiving mail—and he did, for he’d turned the Pellican Postale Service into a veritable symphony of productivity, and now he was all but rolling in mail of all sorts—he’d noticed that much of it was in fact not the good sort of mail but, rather, the bad sort of mail. Which was fun, at first—especially the hate mail, which he enjoyed peeing on to practice what the humans called “aim.” But these days, as his tutors caught him up to speed, he was beginning to get a sinking feeling, something that his adviser, Grinda, called “guilt.” It twisted up in his stomach like a bad boot, and the more he read this one particular letter, the more terrible he felt. The square of paper was quite small, and the handwriting was pleasantly perfect and loopy. He’d expected it to say something quite cheerful, and he’d been horribly disappointed.

  Dear Goode Kingge Gustave the Greate,

  Please send Helppe to we Gnomes of Soperki in the Northe. The Halflings Hereabouts do daily Harry oure People with Murder Moste Foule. Why just Yesterdaye, a Mollotop Boozebomb was tossed into the Gnomehome of my Uncle Hoopi, and we did find him in Severale Moiste Pieces. He is not the Firste, nor will he be the Laste. We Industrious, Peaceful Gnomes wish only to Enjoy our Pudding and contribute our Taxes to your Grande Pleasure without being Unceremoniously Blowne Uppe in our Owne Gnomehomes.

  Most Desperately,

  Floopi Nooperkins

  “Well, that’s distressing,” Gustave said to himself. “Puts me off pudding when I think about it, really.”

  He picked up the next letter, which was human-sized, slit it open with a child-safe letter opener he’d received as a gift, and unfolded the creamy paper. It was another missive from that slimy Lord Ergot of Bruding. Ergot wrote Gustave every other day, congratulating the king on the Foine Jobbe he was doing and bragging about how well his own lands were run and how he should most definitely be invited to the castle for some sort of cabinet appointment, award, or what he called “bro-times on the town,” followed by a winky face. But he also wanted to discuss a persistent problem with gnomes flocking to his city and wantonly improving his infrastructure without permission.

  Gustave had not yet met Lord Ergot in person, and he definitely did not wish to enjoy “bro-times,” with or without a winky face—not on the town, not anywhere. Although Gustave had been made to understand that his job was to get along with earls and lords and not hate them, he recalled with distaste that it had indeed been Lord Ergot who’d killed Bestley, the older brother of his old pooboy, Worstley, who was also dead.

  Perhaps it was not a good omen, Gustave thought, to have a name that ended in -tley.

  This question of gnomes and halflings had come up before; the first letter from Lord Ergot had arrived during his birthday celebration a couple of weeks ago, and at the time he’d decided they should go to the Skyr and settle it. But events had conspired to distract him from mobilizing, what with a constant stream of questions coming in to ask how his policies differed from the late King Benedick’s and the need to respond to a troll uprising in Songlen.

  “Ick,” he said, tossing that letter down into a growing pile that his Officiale Pooboy would eventually haul away, declaring as he did so, “Time to compost the poste!”

  He picked up the next letter in the stack, this one smaller and slightly grubby and written in a careless, childish hand. There was a large grease stain at the bottom of the page, together with an actual piece of honey-glazed bacon that had no doubt created it.

  Deare
Greatte Kinggge Gooodee Gustave,

  Alle is wellle here in Chumpspittle. We Halflings are a Quiet and Studious people who never bother nobody nohow. Anything bad you hear from those Terrible Nastye Noe Goode Gnomes is Gosh Darned Dirty Lies. We just thought You should Know.

  Signed,

  THE HALFLINGS (all of them)

  “All the halflings?” Gustave muttered to himself. “Literally all of them? Do they write letters by committee? Grinda and I can’t even agree on breakfast, much less the wording on a letter.”

  “What’s that, your highness?” Grinda swept into the royale maile room in her official Adviser’s Uniform, which was an elegant arrangement in seafoam green that included a cloak and turban.

  Gustave turned to face her. “Halflings: good or bad?” he asked.

  Grinda was one of the few people Gustave trusted completely. Although he’d once considered her a distinct threat, even aside from the age-old fear that anything on two legs would eat a goat given the slightest provocation or excellent tenderizing marinade recipe, he’d since grown to care deeply for the wise old witch. They’d long ago agreed that there were no stupid questions when a billy goat suddenly found himself human and the ruler of a large kingdom, even if sometimes his questions were a bit peculiar.

  Grinda frowned, the lines of her face melting a bit. “Halflings? To eat, or as employees, or what?”

  Gustave considered. “Just in general. See, I have this letter from ‘the halflings’—all of them, apparently, if letters are to be believed—and then there’s this other letter from a single gnome who tells a very specific tale about halfling violence against his people. And then Lord Ergot assures me that all is well except that gnomes are flooding into his city and improving it without a permit. Oh, and a flyer that promises our next pea-za will be delivered within three hours or Our Monney Shalt Be Return-ed. We like peas, right?”